


Familiarity

by sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hunters & Hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27216100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/pseuds/sunspot
Summary: Some new creature is in the area, and Ikrie means to find it.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Familiarity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serie11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/gifts).



There's a cold in the bones that almost never goes away. It's a sensation that everything else is filtered through and tinted with. Ikrie draws strength from the cold; it makes her solid like ice, makes her unshakeable like the mountains.

When she learned to hunt, those lessons were tempered with cold. It slows her now the way the Stalker is slowed by the pitch black night, or a hawk is slowed by a heavy gust of wind. No, tonight it's not a bitter, biting cold that slows her tracking, it's the strong bite of fear.

Something, Ikrie doesn't know what, wrecked an outpost. It's a little, out of the way place used only in the late summer to camp over while the werak moved on to winter hunting. They'd been here less than a month ago, this place alive with laughter and movement. Now it's been torn apart and trampled flat.

The wind whips up around her, bringing her that familiar, centering wash of cold she needs and steeling her nerves.

She squats low in the snow, to stay out of the wind as best she can and to avoid detection. Whatever crushed the outpost must be bigger than a Scorcher, or at least stronger, but more than that, it had some kind of _sense_ to it. Ikrie had never seen anything, animal or machine, that destroyed things like this. Surely, a machine would thrash around, same as an injured bird, if it were trapped… but there was a single, straight trail of unfamiliar tracks leading into camp that belied anything like that.

Something, some great, hulking metal creature, had picked this placed and destroyed it with intention. Ikrie shivers, unrelated entirely to the weather or climate.

There's some machine in the distance she spots, but it seems to be otherwise occupied. Ikrie creeps closer, shifting with the snow in the wind, not against it. 

It's a trampler. Definitely capable of destroying a few lean-tos and fire pits, but as Ikrie evaluates it, she finds nothing out of the ordinary that would make her believe this machine has the necessary… malevolence.

She nocks two arrows and takes it out all the same, just in case.

There's nothing tying her here to this place, other than the need to find what destroyed her people's place, and the longer she looks for answers, the more fear, frustration, and anger bubble up in her in equal measure.

None of which, of course, are conducive to a proper hunt. She slips her gloves off and scrubs some snow over her hands, letting the sensation draw her back into the moment. The cold will always centre her.

When Ikrie puts her gloves back on, she happens a glance over her shoulder and something catches her eye. There's just the slightest imprint on the snow, like an echo. She wheels around and gets low again, scanning the ground for more. Sure enough, she's picked up a trail. Ikrie doesn't even have time for pride.

She moves from snow drift to drift, keeping her attention split between the tracks and the horizon.

When the tracks start to appear more firmer, more fresh in the top layer of crackling snow, Ikrie finally slows. She doesn't know how long she's followed her quarry, but she studies her surroundings and finds she doesn't know immediately where she is. No matter now, the hunt pounds in her veins, crowding out almost everything; the anger, the fear, the itch on her nose, everything but the background cold.

The machine is not right, she can see that right away. It moves in a skitter, not anything Ike's known before, like it's shying away from something, or taking its time to assess a threat.

Ikrie crouches lower, letting the need of the hunt compel her. She checks the spear on her back, the knives on her belt, and the bow in her hands. There seems to be a weak place where the machine's legs connect to its torso. She launches a pair of arrows and ducks away, getting away from the place she shot from.

The machine whirrs and charges the space she just left. Ikrie looses another arrow, then two more in quick succession. Some thin plating comes loose, sliding off the thing and floating to the ground like feathers.

Ikrie would be content to kite the thing in circles while she shoots from away, but her good luck runs out and the machine zeroes in on her. She throws her bow over her shoulder and readies her spear.

With a hunter's scream and the grating clash of metal, she throws herself onto it. There's a whirlwind, a frenzy. Ikrie tastes blood on her lips and smells the acrid smell of the machine burning oil. So they're both hurt. Good.

Machines, when damaged, start to lose momentum, starting to fizzle on the edges.

Ikrie, when damaged, just channels the pain into more fight.

She strikes brutally hard with her spear once, twice, and the thing collapses to the ground. Ikrie yells again, this time in triumph. The wind whistles back.

Ikrie will need to limp back to safety of the werak, head swimming as the adrenaline leaves her, but in due time. First she'll memorize everything she can about this strange machine and where she's leaving it. She knows the shamans will want to study it before anyone touches it for parts.

The snow starts falling thickly when Ikrie starts walking back in the direction of the werak's encampment, but it doesn't bother her. She lets the soft flakes land on her furs, hair, and eyelashes without disturbing them. Finally, released from the frenzy of the hunt, she allows herself a small smile, and then a grin. She'll leave it to the chieftain and the shamans to decide what this new machine is, and what trouble it wants to cause for them. For now, today was a good day and the snow brings her peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Trick or Treat! <3


End file.
